1998
Lionel the Landcruiser
and Tap-Tap go Walkabout

Home at last!
Day 28
Ningaloo - Perth

Yes, here we are home on Sunday 26 July as promised!

Actually we got in at 1.34 am on Sunday morning, which means that we had been away for 2 hours less then 28 days, and I had driven over 12,000 km in that time! Rob and Hild have gone to bed and probably won't be up for a while so I am having a last chat with Tap-Tap before we get all unpacked tomorrow and I finally get my shower! They got me all muddy again today (or rather yesterday it should be, but until it gets light it feels still like today) and then it rained such a lot from around Geraldton until Badgingarra and then started again once we got to Yanchep and its still going now. What a welcome home to Perth - I couldn't even see the skyscrapers until we were already at City West!

In fact it rained last night (Friday night that is) while Hild and Rob were asleep, which was fun for me 'cos they hadn't put the fly-sheet on the tent ('cos it collected condensation and often dripped into the tent) so they woke up with rain falling on them and had to jump up and put the fly-sheet on in the middle of the night. Rob didn't even put any clothes on - just his shoes, which was not a pretty site I can tell you, prancing around naked in the rain! Anyway, it didn't rain for long, just enough to get everything nice and wet and muddy for me on the last day of off-road stuff. Hmmphh.

After the midnight disturbance (around 4.00 actually) I thought they might lie-in, but no, they were up and packing up around 6 as usual. Breakfasted and with rather muddy tarpaulin and shoes, we got going by about 6.45 again and went down the coast towards what I at least was hoping to be some decent driving across Yardie Creek and through the dunes down to Coral Bay. Well, Yardie creek was a bit of a let down, bit of soft sand to get down there and then some more to get up the other side, but just hard sand all the way across - they should be taken before the truth in advertising commission calling it a creek crossing!

On the other side it was a rough track which was fun, but it wasn't until we got out of the national park and into something referred to as the 'Commonwealth Bombing Rang'(!) that the track got a bit muddy and slippery and I at least felt like it was worth my while to be in 4WD. That has probably been the most disappointing bit of this trip for me - most of the roads have been in good condition with just the corrugations on the gravel causing any problems, whereas I really do like to get my teeth into something meaty like a nice river crossing or a washed out track down the side of a hill. I'll have to get Rob to take me out for weekends once Hild has gone to Copenhagen and find something fun to go at.

Anyway, the track own to Coral Bay was interesting at least with a few nice views and a surprising number of very permanent looking campers at spots in the dunes. Some of them had their names on posters at the track leading up from the main route and were set up with all kinds of stuff. I'm not sure if they were on private or government land, but they sure looked like squatters to me! It almost looked like they were turning it into another Wedge Island, with an impromptu little village being set up on the beach. Some bits went through sheep country and we waved at them, but they were Merinos and just ran away scared. Hild reckons Merinos are really dumb sheep, 'bred for wool not wits' she says, and I think I have to agree with her. Once we crossed a homestead access road I went back into 2WD and finished off the track in that , which just goes to show how easy it was, bad corrugations in places but nothing worse than that.

Coral Bay is very much more of a holiday town than Exmouth, with everything based on tourists and really only consists of two caravan parks and lots of dive/snorkel/coral viewing boats and associated ways of getting money out of visitors. We bought some fresh rolls and had lunch on the beach watching kiddies in the water while their parents tried to keep them dry for the upcoming boat trip. Rob and Hild debated a glass-bottomed boat trip, but then decided they had seen much the same snorkelling yesterday and without lots of other people so we carried on back onto the sealed roads for the rest of the way home.

After filling up in Carnarvon around 2.30 the planning began as to how far to go tonight and where to stop. No-one seemed tired so we decided to stop and cook dinner somewhere around Billabong Roadhouse (around 5.30 ish) and then just push on through to Perth. Max (the GPS) was telling us that Mill Point Road wasn't very far away and at the rate Hild was driving, we could get there in 8 hours. Of course Max doesn't bother with things like roads and he just picks the straight line between two points, but it didn't look like the road deviated too much from that so we decided to go for it. The tarpaulin was pretty wet and muddy after last night's rain and I don't think Rob fancied getting it out again, but at the same time if we just put the tent up on the ground, then that would get muddy as well, so I think the decision was unanimous in the end.

After Carnarvon, we carried on and when we reached the turn off to Shark Bay and Monkey Mia, we were back onto roads we had been on before (Hild and Rob having driven to Monkey Mia a few years ago) so we weren't going to miss much by driving through the night and we stopped to cook dinner just as the sun was setting in a rest stop south of Billabong Roadhouse. It was already filling up with caravans and campers (no tents mind you) and many of the barbeques were already going strong. What is it with Aussies that they have to burn all the time, I think they have a collective pyromania. We must have looked a bit out of place with our little meths stove (a good Swedish Trangia that cooks in all weathers and packs away really neatly), but we didn't care as we had a Rice-a-Riso with a tin of ham in and then cooked up some pancakes to eat on the way south.

This took a bit of time, but by that time it was dark and so we had avoided the dusk bit which can be a bit harder driving 'cos the sun causes a lot more glare. On our way again we filled up with diesel in Northampton (Rob had his iced coffee and Hild got some coke for when it would be here turn to drive) and we were off on the last leg. With one last jerry-can for security we knew we would make it home now no probs so we weren't worried about petrol stations being closed or anything and we just drove off into the night. Hild fell asleep so I had to suffer Rob singing to Elton John repeatedly 'cos he couldn't change the tape! And then it began to rain around Geraldton which didn't help matters a lot either.

The other advantage about driving at night is that - in general - Australians don't. There is this folk-lore that holds that killer kangaroos come out at night ready to crash into unsuspecting native motorists causing millions of dollars worth of damage to pretty new Landcruisers. Well, all I can say is they must have heard me coming 'cos the only things I saw that weren't encased in metal were a couple of rabbits and a whole lot of (now)dead bugs on my windscreen. On the whole trip, we only saw roos and wallabies in early morning or dusk, and if you are awake and alert (and not going too fast) then you don't have much trouble with them. Emus on the other hand are a bloody menace. These particularly stupid birds run about like headless chickens and one even tried to ram me from the side on this trip - I had to accelerate to get away from it! Anyway, apart from a few (and I mean about 5 or 6) cars with boat trailers, me and the road trains had the road to ourselves and so it was a pleasant drive.

At night the road trains are lit up like big moving Christmas trees and then have so many headlights that you can see them coming from miles away and you always end up dipping your headlights about 5 minutes in advance! Of course with my spotties I don't do too badly myself, especially as they have taken to looking up at the sky these days, bird-spotting or star-gazing or something. Every time we re-point them at the road, in a few kilometres, there they are again looking skyward. I shall have to get Rob to give them a stiff talking to with a spanner. At one stage they were looking at two different things and I was feeling distinctly cross-eyed!

The rain eased off around Badgingarra, so we put the jerry-can in while it was dry. We might have got by without it, but Rob was a bit of a wimp about standing in the rain filling me up so he stopped as soon as the rain did to put it in then. Hild took over the driving after sleeping through all the hard bits (getting through Geraldton in the driving rain) and the rest is - as they say - history. We took the usual route - cutting across to the Yanchep - Lancelin road at Moore river and then driving down through Joondalup onto the freeway. This kept up the 'round-trip' aspect to the bitter end as we had driven out of Perth along the Great Eastern and were coming back in from the north and only back-tracked about 20 metres along Mill Point Road to get back to the flat!

So, that is that. This is what I did on my holidays, so to speak. I hope Tap-Tap has recorded my thoughts and musings faithfully this last 4 weeks, he does have a tendency to make his own suggestions under the guise of helping me with my grammar and spelling, but I guess you get that with a Compaq. There is of course a whole 'nother story of this trip, dictated into the tape recorder and transcribed diligently by Hild each night and on which the trip statistics book will be based. I've never seen anyone quite so obsessed with cataloguing how far we have come, or how much diesel we use on which kind of surface as these two humans. I mean, it only took 4 weeks, but I'll bet they spend another 6 months analysing the data!

Speaking of books, I've been sort of getting into the swing of this story-telling thing and I think Tap-Tap and I might tidy this up ourselves and spice it up with a few photos and see if it wouldn't make a nice Christmas present. Hmmmmm. If I remember rightly , I think Mike Jones came up with a possible title over dinner in Darwin one night. Yes, that's right - after the cheap Marguerita night when they tried every one of them on the menu (and a few that weren't by the sound of things) he suggested "Lionel the Landcruiser and Tap-Tap Go Walkabout" sounds good - maybe we'll use it, but for now...

...this is me - Lionel the Landcruiser - signing off.